Punitive Liberalism: Micro Edition

Just as many on the left are repulsed by America’s imperfect history and its founding fathers, so do many at the Los Angles Times, such as columnist Tim Rutten, complain bitterly about the Chandler family, who founded the paper in the late 19th century, but whose ownership has become increasingly diluted for years, until it was ultimately sold to the Chicago Tribune. As Hugh Hewitt writes:

Read the whole thing. Then ask yourself about The Tribune Company’s management that not only endures but promotes a gang of Iagos within its west coast flagship. No wonder the paper is crumbling. I am not a shareholder of the company, but if I was, I would be asking what in the world is going on when the company allows itself to be attacked publicly day in and out in its own papers in a way designed to drive off readers and destroy revenue? The decline in the value of the Times and the Tirbune Company has injured millions of shareholders. Rutten et al have been burning down the building for years now, and taking with it the equity of investors who include a lot of retirees, some of them their former colleagues.

That’s a liberal for you –focus blame and hatred on the Chandlers, and never ever ask what you might have contributed to the collapse and the cost you helped inflict on folks who were depending upon you. Look at the five year decline in the value of a Tribune share. All those newsroom lefties who spent the past half-decade complaining about Chicago, dragging their feet and refusing to innovate while constantly, intriguing, bickering and throwing brickbats have been defunding the retirement of every Times employee who went before them, as well as every other shareholder out there.

And the Chandlers, who haven’t been running the place for years, get blamed by Rutten who no doubt speaks for all of the “veteran reporters” and upholders of the tradition.

Wow. I knew the place was dysfunctional, but I didn’t know how deeply.

Of course, this isn’t the first occasion that the L.A. Times has attacked its own founding fathers.

Update: Mickey Kaus visits the Paramount lot in L.A., borrows one of Star Trek’s universal translators, and explains what Rutten is really saying.